Digital Mapping for
Business & Government

Text Editor - Creates and edits programs.

MapBasic Compiler - Creates an executable from a program.

MapBasic Linker - Links program modules, that were written separately, when creating large or complex applications.

Online Help - Provides reference information for each statement and function in the MapBasic language.

Statements & Functions - The MapBasic language contains over 300 statements and functions including:

• Flow Control - looping, branching sub-procedures, user-defined functions, event handlers, error handling.
  

• Connectivity - Call routines from DLLs. Communicate with other applications using DDE. Control MapInfo Professional using DDE or OLE Automation. Access remote data sources through ODBC.
  

• User Interface - Create new menu bars, menus or menu items, remove items from existing menus. Create or modify buttons on tool bars. Create custom dialogue boxes with text boxes, drop down lists, buttons, check-boxes, radio buttons, style pickers, select boxes. Show or hide standard windows, control events on selection, map window changes, window closure, window focus change, button push or application termination.
  

• Variables - local, global, numeric, string, logical, dates, and object variable types: arrays and custom data structures.
  

• Table and File Manipulation - Use Excel, Lotus 1-2-3 , xBASE and ASCII files directly. Built-in SQL commands to query, sort, aggregate, join and create derived data. (Supports select statements with FROM, WHERE, ORDER BY, GROUP BY clauses with sub-selects). Supports equi-joins and geographic joins. Commit changes, roll-back changes. Connect to data via ODBC. Open, close, read, write to ASCII and binary files.
  

• Functions - String, data conversion, math, date, time and geographic functions.
  

• Geographic Object Manipulation - Create points, lines, polylines, text, polygons, buffer and more. Edit and manipulate objects including reshape, object conversions, split, combine and erase. Calculate area, perimeter, length, centroid and area overlap. Modify object styles. Display maps from multiple layers, control display settings and create thematic maps. Find and geocode objects.

Application development environment for MapInfo Professional

MapBasic^®, is a complete, BASIC-like programming language used to create custom applications for use with MapInfo Professional or special MapInfo runtimes. MapBasic extends geographic functionality, automates repetitive operations, and integrates MapInfo Professional with other applications - quickly and easily.

Build Custom Applications
With MapBasic, a custom application can be as simple as adding a menu item to MapInfo Professionalor as sophisticated as redesigning the entire user interface and extending the functionality of MapInfo Professional. You can modify the MapInfo Professional user interface by adding customized toolbars, menus and dialog boxes to suit the specific needs and technical sophistication of the end user. You can even hide unneeded functionality or change the terminology to reflect a specific application.

Integrate MapInfo Professional
MapBasic allows you to work in the programming languages you are most familiar with and integrates the optimal amount of mapping functionality into applications. Another advantage to the Integrated Mapping feature is even as MapInfo Professional is running in the background, it remains as a hidden server to the application - allowing the end user to see only one application interface. The Integrated Mapping feature also lets you control MapInfo Professional through popular development tools such as Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, Delphi and C++, giving you the ability to:

• Control MapInfo Professional through OLE Automation
• Add mapping to your Visual Basic application with as little as five lines of code
• Create MapInfo windows inside other custom programs. For instance, you can create a MapInfo Professional window inside your Visual Basic form. Integrated Mapping allows you to 'reparent' MapInfo Professional windows so they look and act like part of your Visual Basic (or other language) interface. If you've been wanting to add 'a little bit of mapping' to your custom applications, this is the tool for the job
• Program in development environments of your choice. If you're a C++ programmer, you can do all of your coding in C++

You can use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) to communicate with other software packages. Plus, MapBasic applications can call routines in Windows Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL) files.